


Once dwelt in that annihilated place

by StripySock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 05:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17176448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: The world is empty and all Sam and Dean have ever had left is each other. Title is from Horace Smith's Ozymandis, the story referenced in text is by Bradbury.





	Once dwelt in that annihilated place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marcia Elena (marciaelena)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/gifts).



> The world is empty and all Sam and Dean have ever had left is each other. Title is from Horace Smith's Ozymandis, the story referenced in text is by Bradbury.
> 
> Happy Yuletide marciaelena! I hope you enjoy this small slice of post-apocalyptic life.

The tarmac is so hot that it's started bubbling, just a little, black blotches of it welling up and bursting until they’re subsumed again into the morass. Dean can feel the heat of it through the soles of his boots, the stickiness underfoot an uneasy feeling as though the whole world is shifting underneath him, a more visceral and intense change than the empty cars around them, the mute abandoned reminders of a world that was, and will never be again. When he looks at the edge of the road, there's a thin matted tangle of grass beginning to obscure the sharp edges, a green intrusion, nature returning. He can see the muted imprint of his own steps in the softened tar, focuses his eyes on the blurred outline of Sam's steps. That's something that's changed since everything has. Sam walks a little ahead now if they don’t walk side by side, and Dean pretends it's not because he needs to see Sam to know he's still alive. It's a gnawing fear that digs knives into him, resurrecting old thoughts that shame him as much as they make him sweat and ache. The thought of Sam leaving, vanishing, is ashes in his mouth.

He doesn't know if Sam feels the same way, but he can see the twitch of his neck as he glances just a little to see if Dean's still behind him.

"Sam," he says, jerks his head towards one of the houses on the side of the road where he thinks he saw movement, doesn't say what sits on the tip of his tongue. _Stay with me._ Realistically, Sam of course is going nowhere, at least not yet. As far as they can tell, in the distance they've driven and the miles they've walked, they're the only living things on the face of the planet. There's insects still, but not even the dogs and cats are left, and they haven't yet left for anywhere where there might be something bigger, fiercer. Sam talks about bears in Yellowstone Park, but Dean will kick his ass before they go that far, before his mind adds the image of Sam being shredded by a grizzly to the inescapable rotation of his thoughts. He thinks it's the silence that does it. When it first pressed in, he thought he was going mad, the ineluctable constant hum of humanity eradicated in one night. No cars in the night, no rumble of voices in the room next door, or anything other than the soft certain sound of Sam's breathing, nothing to fill the space in his head with anything other than Sam and his own thoughts. He thought he'd known silence before, in the dark of night, in the midst of hell when the screams stopped, but it was all a poor semblance of a ripped off Simon and Garfunkel album filler in comparison, and the size of it is a constant pressure inside his skull.

Sam swerves and they go inside together, Dean first this time, because this is what they do. This is part of their old life, Dean moving forward and Sam dropping back, covering Dean like always. It's never anything. Last time it was a curtain, the time before that a door. Inside it's like a thousand other places, empty and still, gutted of human presence, the oven and lights turned off by some cosmic gentle hand, like when the people went, everything paused and shut itself off, held in abeyance for their return. Seen like this, Dean can't shake the belief that this can't be it, that this can’t be the end.

On the table is a coffee cup and a book flat on its face, spine bent to hold the place. The cushion is a little dented as though whoever was here had just risen and wandered off to get a refill, to call their mom, to do anything that would bring them back in a moment. Bookmarked in time like most of the rest of the world. Seized by a sudden impulse, he picks the book up and closes it, returns it to the table. Ghosts the Winchesters might be in this new, strange world, but they'd always made a difference. Upstairs is the same—runners tossed in a corner, and sure enough, the curtains fluttering in the open window. Sam sits on the bed not made in two months and rubs his hand over his mouth. Sam's not used to scavenging, not anymore, feels like they're robbing the dead. They've grown soft, it feels, the routine too safe, the life too easy. Dean's lived this before, a life made up of ill-fitting Goodwill pieces, and slipping back into it makes it feel like he never left, an almost comforting familiarity of rootlessness. He owns what he holds in his own two hands. It's almost enough.

Outside the shade of the house, the sun beats down with renewed relentless force and the back of Dean's t-shirt is wet and he can feel the back of his neck beginning to heat and redden even under the reluctantly applied sunscreen. He can see Sam's hair, sticking to his neck, sweat-thick and dark, curling against his skin, and the urge to nudge his lips over the glimpse of tan skin is neither new nor uncontrollable. It's part of the silence in his head, he thinks, that he can no longer drown it out. It's always been there inside him, deep poisonous roots that squirmed inside his heart, so long ago that he thinks he grew around them, swallowed them up, and fed them all the things they needed to live. He'll never be at peace with it, not either the old shame or the new fear of ever saying it, if only to fill the silence and drive Sam away before Sam chooses to leave. He can live with it, day by day, the knowledge that everything the devil ever said was true. For now, he bats aside the thought, focuses on the solidity of Sam in front of him, here for now, if not forever.

He's never questioned why they still follow the routine—bad motels and worse bars, and tonight is no different. The carpet is shitty, but the beds are made and clean with only a light sprinkling of dust, a little musty but still good enough to sleep on. Sam said, once, at the beginning, before they'd known that this was it, that they were the last, that it was safer if there was anything left that wanted to them, it probably wouldn't pick The Sunshine Motel as the first place to look. Dean thinks it's that if they leave the routines, then there's nothing left to replace it. Sam brushes his teeth and Dean takes out the booze, ignores the thin, tight look on Sam's face as he refills his flask straight from the bottle and sets the rest of it aside, carefully. When he drinks, the silence is still there, but he can ignore it more easily, stop looking for things to fill it with, replace his own thoughts with the blurred whiskey-drowned version. Anything to keep him from being pathetic enough to lie there listening to the breaths that Sam takes at night, counting them, waiting for them to stop and for him to be left alone. He can replace the imaginary taste of Sam in his mouth, on his tongue, with bourbon, not one tenth as bad for him.

"I read this story once," Sam says conversationally. Dean doesn't bother replying with anything other than a quick look at first. There's a spider he's tracking on the wall and silence in the room.

"Yeah?" he says when Sam doesn't continue. "A book? Not like you."

He can almost hear Sam smile in the semi-darkness. "Asshole. Like I was saying. It was about everyone in the world realising at the same time that when night came they were all going to die. And, like, they live their normal day. They go to work, they mow their lawns. And that night, they close their eyes knowing that they're not going to wake up. It was pretty peaceful."

"Man, some people are really hopeful," Dean says. He still has his eyes on the spider; it's made it's slow way across the wall with purpose and it's almost blended into the thin dark line where the walls join. "Like you think that would happen?" It's pretty rhetorical. They both know it wouldn't.

There's a movement in the corner of his eye, Sam shifting to face Dean in the dark. Dean keeps his eye on the spider, because whatever Sam says he doesn't want to hear it. _Look away,_ he thinks, but he can almost feel the pressure of Sam's gaze on the side of his neck and nothing is ever that easy. "Do you think they knew?" Sam says, and the hair on the back of Dean's neck raises and prickles at the tone of Sam's voice. _Shut up,_ he thinks; he doesn't want to know. Doesn't want to consider that maybe everyone in the world got some advance warning that the end was here. That Sandy Smith with her peeling nametag and sweetheart neckline, pouring coffee with a smile on her face, had known that she wouldn't finish the day out.

He ignores the question. "Do you remember Sandy Smith?" he asks instead. "The cute waitress with the blonde hair, kinda tall."

"No?" Sam replies, the question there in the reply.

It's kind of weird, Dean thinks, that that means that he's the only person in the world who remembers who she was. He gropes for the flask in his jeans and burns out the thought, can still feel Sam's eyes on him and it's a little worse than cheap bourbon, even if there's not much judgement in the look. There's not many pleasures left and Dean will be damned if he gives this one up, or at least that's what he lets Sam think. Sam thinks it's a crutch, like Dean wouldn't be able to cope with the status quo if he didn't have his old friends Jack and Jim to prop him up, and Dean isn't eager to share the real reason. "I don't think they knew," he says, finally. The spider has gone, slipped some place secret or hidden. Or maybe it's vanished like every fucking other thing in the world, slid through some crack in reality and left about as much behind as nine billion humans and change had. He turns over and drops the flask onto the floor. "If they knew, they'd have trashed the place before they left." After that he pretends to sleep and Sam lets him pretend.

The dreams are pretty usual. In one of them, he's walking on water, arms outstretched for balance, one careful foot in front of the other. He can feel the water on his bare feet, and the salt on his mouth, and next that salt is Sam's neck as Dean kisses the secret angle between his neck and his shoulder, drags his mouth across the sun-hot skin while tarmac bubbles underneath their feet and he's once again being sucked down beneath the ground, the red-hot burn of claws slicing across his stomach, the devouring fear and still Sam is in his hands, being dragged down with him. He wakes hazily up, shreds of the dream disappearing around him, and then falls back into sleep, to thoughts of chipping the Impala out of a block of stone, the chisel cold as ice in his hand and the stone as warm as blood, like he's cutting through living flesh and still the silence multiplies and all he can hear is his own faintly obscene-sounding breaths and the chip of metal against stone. He thinks he can feel the rock shudder beneath his blows. 

When he wakes up, Sam is screaming. That is also pretty usual, and Dean swims back to the surface hazily, used to the sound. He wakes Sam up easily, hands around his wrist holding him to the bed, learnt after the first bloody nose all those years ago, and Sam comes back slowly, reason re-emerging and after all this time, Dean still thinks with a shudder of Sam locked in his own head, a familiar twinge of fury and distress at the thought. He lets go of Sam, and it's a struggle, more of a struggle than it usually is with the blood-hot sense memory of Sam's skin under his mouth. Every time it takes a little more effort. He's terrified of the day when he won't be able to stop.

Sam's breathing raggedly like he's still caught in the dream, on his back, staring at the ceiling. "Dean," he says into the darkness.

"Yeah," Dean replies, because there's no question there, just Sammy reaching out and Dean reaching back. "I'm here." It's not words he'd say if the shadows weren't here to hide his face, if Sam wasn't staring at the ceiling, if there wasn't no-one else in all the world to hear him say it, because everything he's ever felt is in those words.

"So am I," Sam says, and the words are slurred, slow and so quiet Dean almost misses them. Sam rolls onto his side again and Dean doesn't try not to meet his gaze, can just about see the white blink of Sam's eyes, feels the shiver race down his back once again, tracking a well-worn path.

They're on their way to the ocean. They've nowhere else to go, no place to be, and they both know that when they stop moving, it'll be for good. The world is already shrinking for them; given how fast gas goes, they'll probably never see the other side of the country again, a knowledge that sinks uneasily into Dean's travelling bones. He's always thought that if he ever stopped, it would be through choice. Sam's already learning, already collecting books about survival with stupid titles and smug authors, all of them gone, nothing of them left except words on a page and Sam's eyes to read them. He props them up against his face as they drive, as they use up what the world has left them, piece by piece, until they'll have to wrestle what they need, a new kind of fight and one they've never known. There's books about farming, about building, about general medicine, even though if anything worse than a bug bite comes for them, they'll probably be dead, sticky notes on every page in Sam's handwriting, and Dean turns his face against the sun and keeps driving. If he squints, the world's exactly the same—yellow fronds fill the fields, and the thick summer scent in the air brings him back to a time when he could expect to see another car on the road.

They hoard the sealed cans of gas they get jealously, and the car smells of it now, thick and greasy, Sam leaning against the open window to escape it, one leg propped against the door, and Dean can't see his face like this, still loves it best, not one step forward, or one step back, but Sam at his side, big fingers gentle as he ruffles the pages, eyes hidden under a fringe of hair that hasn't seen scissors in weeks.Like this with the empty road, it could be any year, any time or place, a hundred moments just like this one, a hundred moments that got swallowed up and took their place inside Dean alongside where the rest of the bad things live. He's never been less afraid that eyes off the road will result in disaster, and this world does have moments of compensation. He can look his fill like this, and as though Sam feels the thought, he looks up suddenly, catches Dean's eye and smiles, like there's nothing missing, like there isn't a gaping hole where the rest of the world should be. Like Dean's enough to be getting on with.

The sea is about as changed by what's happened as the sky is, utterly uncaring and impersonal. Where they've parked up on a rocky beach, an empty coastline stretches for miles, the water touched with sunlight, the air chillier than they've been used to, laced through with a sea breeze that slides through the gaps in their clothing even as the sun beats down on them. Further out from the shore, a yacht bobs, anchored still, sails impeccably white and full, bleached by the sun, uninhabited, a playground for ghosts if they had existed anymore than people did now. It's peaceful like this, the sigh of the waves filling up the silence, background noise that Dean has missed in its absence. "Had to pick rock, Sam," Dean says, mostly teasing.

"Couldn't listen to the complaints about sand," Sam replies, and starts forward, down the beach. Dean lets him go, watches him walk away into the wind, tall figure growing shorter, wanders down to the sealine, walks in the other direction along the thin join of the sea to shore until he has to turn to see Sam, the old familiar duty of watching out for him, combined with new fear that if he looks away too long, Sam will join the spider and the rest of humanity wherever they are right now. Sam's surprisingly close, unhurried strides bringing him closer still, and Dean doesn't need to be a genius to read Sam's face or to see that his expression bodes no good for either of them. 

There's a little bit of anger, pumping swift and sure under Dean's skin, because anger is easier and better than fear, because he was just beginning to hope, just beginning to believe that they could live, even like this. "I've been thinking," Sam begins, and Dean swallows back the rejoinder that Sam rarely does anything else, and it rarely helps. "We shouldn't be here. We shouldn't be alive. Or rather I shouldn't be. And that if I weren't here, maybe they would be." He's about to say something else and Dean knows exactly what, bullshit about how if there's some way to swap, some way to take stone out of fate's path, some way to save everybody else if Sam just lies down and plays dead just right, then they should do it.

Dean says it then, what he's been thinking since this started, the unforgiveable thing that pares away most of what's enabled him to carry on in that past world, to view himself as something more than one of the monsters he's spent his life hunting. "I don't care, Sam. I don't care, and Jesus I know I should. I miss it, I miss everything. I miss what we had back then, of course I do. But I wouldn't swap it for you, and I won't let you swap yourself for it, even if we could figure out some way to do that, even if it would work. If I could have saved only one person, picked only one, it'd have been you. I'd thank fucking God himself if I thought the bastard had any hand in it, that if he had to fuck this planet up, he left me you." It feels like acid to say it, the honesty too raw and hurtful—if Sam wants to, he could take these words and flay Dean open with them, carve him up and leave him for dead, honesty once again unquestionably the worst policy.

Sam doesn't say anything, mouth half open, a surprised look on his face, as though any possible element of what Dean said could have been a surprise to him in any world, when the only surprise should be that Dean would ever say it, ever offer up the pieces that make him tick and strip himself bare even to Sam, especially to Sam. Dean rubs his hand over his mouth, feels the week-old growth prickle his skin. Sam not saying anything is still better than Sam saying too much. If Sam needs to pretend Dean didn't say that, Dean can do that for him, and he takes a breath so he can plaster over the moment, begin building up the wall he just ripped down.

"Don't say anything," Sam says, and he sounds like he's been screaming, throat whispery and raw. When he moves, Dean can't think to move away, and it's a bigger surprise when Sam does it, kisses him, takes the words from Dean's mouth and swallows them, and he's fire-hot to the touch, a glowing heat that Dean already knows he'll never be able to get enough of, Sam against him, skin on skin, his hand around the back of Dean's neck like he wants to stop him from running. "Did you always want this?"

It'd be easier to say no and it wouldn't be untrue, not really. Dean never even thought of the possibility, had never imagined it, not once, not ever. Not in any way that he could explain or quantify or reason with. But the answer to whether he knew he wanted it or not is yes, and that's what he gives Sam. Even if no would be easier, would allow them both to pretend that the empty world was the only reason, even if Dean's lied to Sam over the years, lied so much that it's easy and sweet to add another one to the pile, this time he's giving the truth, an unpalatable present. "Yeah," he says, and follows it up. "It's OK that you didn't." 

Dean wishes he could say that there is any shred of nobility in the way he will take Sam. It would bolster his ego to be able to say that if Sam hadn't wanted this in the world before, that he couldn't have it when there were no more options, no other places to run, no-one else to touch and have. It would be a lie,though. Dean takes what he's given, and takes what he isn't given, and hoards it, a miserly store of treasure that he can't and won't share with anyone else. He pays too much for some of the things and not enough for the rest, and it all evens out in the accounting. Some things come dirt cheap; after all these years in the most secret part of himself, in the deep uneasy well of darkness that's never been given light, never been aired or cleaned, the ruined pit of truth that fuels him with the immutable truth that some things are too damaged to save or mend, he's held the opinion that a soul to save Sam was cheap at twice the price.

Sam's hand on his neck tightens, and Dean can barely meet the intensity of his gaze. "Dean, if you'll hear only one thing, hear this. Stop telling me what you think I feel and then telling me that's real. I'm not leaving. I'm not going anywhere. Stop trying to make your own stupid predictions come true. Believe that I want to stay with you." It hurts more to try and believe than any declaration of love ever could, but the way that Sam looks, burning and intent like he needs this to be believed is what does Dean in, in the end. He's never been able to say no, not when it really mattered, and it's too much to fight, the belief that Sam might feel the same way. Perhaps he could, if everything in him didn't make him want to believe, but the combination of them both is too much.

The way Sam touches him is reminiscent of too many dreams, and he bats Sam's hands away, slides his own hand under the t-shirt that Sam wears, touches the warm safe skin of his hip, the sharp jut of bone and long curve of muscle that he's never looked too closely at, too afraid of what he might see. His thumb rests easily in the groove, his fingers spanning the strong expanse of back, and Sam lets him. That's the bit he'll return to: that Sam lets him touch like this, love him like this, with all the words he can't say written out on his skin. He wants it all and he wants nothing at all, is caught between the need to touch, the need to soak up Sam in all his senses and store him up for a time when he might not have this, and the overriding need within himself to make sure this is OK. 

When he looks up, though, from where his thumb sits on Sam’s side, Sam’s gaze is still on him, sharp and magnetic. “I said,” he says quietly, no more than a whisper on his lips, “believe that I want to stay with you.” And there’s everything in that. Dean’s always believed in his secret self, that he wants too much, takes too much. There’s never been room in his life to believe that Sam could want as well, not in the same way, and he’s shamed at that in one solitary moment when he sees Sam be the one to go out on a limb and risk it all. They don’t line up totally; Dean is not fool enough to believe that they ever could. They’ll fight; of course they will. Sam will never give up believing in something better, never give up fighting for it. Dean will never give up believing that Sam matters more than what Sam wants. They’ll never agree, but Dean dares to hope that they can grow beyond needing to.

The rasp of Sam’s thumb across Dean’s stubble, the way he closes the gap between them and rubs at the corner of Dean’s mouth like Sam still can’t believe he’s allowed to touch, and Dean feels the sensation down his spine, at the back of his neck, Sam taking casual possession of them both. This time he’s the one who leans in for the kiss, and Sam lets him, opens his mouth a little at Dean’s urging, licks along his bottom lip delicately, then kisses him back, fingers on Dean’s jaw like he needs them angled exactly, perfectionism in a whole new sense. Dean retaliates by dragging his fingers up from Sam’s waist, across the slightest dip in Sam’s muscle, the solidity of his ribs, all of him alive, all of him well. He’s done his job, he thinks. Sam lives, even if everything else does not, and he should be horrified at the selfishness of it all, but he isn’t. If he can’t tell the truth in his own head, he can’t tell it anywhere.

Sam sighs under his mouth, bites at his lips, sharp offsetting sting to the cold of the wind and the momentary heat of the sun. They could fuck here like this and nobody would see, nobody would care; the breeze would pass on regardless and the sea rush in without care, swallowing them up until everything they’ve done is hidden. He wants it. Wants to take Sam apart piece by piece on the rocky floor of the beach, absent of witnesses. 

Sam has other ideas, though, yanks the short hairs at the edge of Dean’s scalp between clever fingers and the pain of it brings Dean up short, coming out of the strung-out haze that he’s been reduced to at the thought of Sam in any way at all. “Dean,” Sam says, “Dean,” and Dean couldn’t ask to hear anything else. “Back,” Sam says and that’s how they end up back at the motel, back where they’ve always been, where the paint peels and the ice machine no longer works, where they can hide behind walls and pay-per-view, where everything they occupy comes at a price, and personal space is no different. Dean pays Sam’s price gladly, kisses the angular width of his face, smudges away the space between his jaw and his mouth, amazed that he gets this, amazed that Sam can bear to touch him, knowing as he does the darkest, most shrivelled bits of Dean’s soul, the bits he’s kept successfully hidden for years, so deep that even hell couldn’t shake them loose and make a mockery of the sad remnants Dean keeps for a shrine.

There’s the moment of awkwardness when Sam strips off his t-shirt and Dean drops his holster on a bed and they stand there with nothing between them except decades of brotherhood and centuries of shame. Sam’s always been the bravest, Dean thinks apropos of nothing at all, as Sam steps forward and then sinks to his knees, turns his face against Dean and waits until Dean falls as well. He’s done this so many times, and never at all. Taken girls to bed and been taken, but Sam is not them, could never be and will never be. He doesn’t let Dean get away with lies, with promises that he’ll care in the morning. He’ll take what Dean has to give, take more than he’s been given, and in that way, they’ll always be brothers, no matter what else they’ll be. He wonders if deep inside himself, Sam has a similarly empty pit. 

There’s kisses, along his ribs, along his neck, the uncertain hot brand of Sam’s mouth, and Dean treasures them, saves them up, each and every one for a time when there might be none. Reciprocates, tries a little bravery of his own: a twist of his hand down Sam’s thigh, the touch of his hand against Sam’s cock, the final barrier broken between them, the point from which they can never go back, never sit in the same car again and be merely brothers. Sam tenses and relaxes, thrusts against Dean’s grasp, and Dean curls his hand into Sam’s too-long hair, pulls him a little closer so he can see it all, see the way that Sam’s mouth opens a little as though he wants to cry out, the uneven crooked line of Sam’s teeth, none of it new, except to Dean like this. 

Sam is hot to the touch, smooth skin under Dean's hand, wet at the tip and solid in the hand. He'd be surprisingly big if he wasn't big all over, and Dean's mouth waters, a reflex action that takes him by surprise. Dean has always been what was needed. Father's son. Brother's brother. He'd categorise this as more of the same, if he didn't want it so much himself. He's never felt this overwhelming need before, never believed that if he wasn't enough he wouldn't be left behind. Now with the way Sam gasps under his mouth, bruises Dean's hip with his grasp, pulling him closer, not letting him go, he wonders if he can learn that all over again. Sam ruts against his hand, eyes screwed shut, and Dean strokes him reflexively, over and over, before he ever goes down. 

There’s a battering of voices in his head that protest against it, but the months of silence help him ignore them. There’s just Sam. Just Sam and the way he tries not to fuck up, the way he twists his hands into the sheets and doesn’t touch, and Dean can live with that. Licks at the solid cut of muscle at the intersection of Sam’s thigh, drags fingers and mouth over the flesh of his cock and watches finally as Sam breaks, pushes his hips up and takes what he needs. Months without touch finally come undone, and even between the rasping unevenness of the breaths he can take, the punchedout moments where he can regroup and try again, he can barely believe he gets this as Sam widens his thighs and invites him in further until Dean is surrounded in all senses, Sam in his mouth, his fingers inside Sam slick and wet, and Sam finally, holding his head, fingers solid and cool on his jaw as he rides Dean out until he’s done.

Dean’s so on the edge from it alone that a touch would set him off. Sam could do what he wants, say what he wants, and Dean could do it, here in this room under the eyes of an uncaring universe and an empty world. At this moment, he counts himself lucky that what Sam wants to do is kiss him, wants to jerk him off, Dean on top of him, covering them both from views that will never come, slick fingers around his dick, the graze of his fingers intimate and shocking, from the length of his neck to the dip in his ass, all of it Sam’s. He can feel Sam’s need, bucks into it, feels Sam’s hand strip his orgasm from him until he can only endure and feel, sharp staticky bursts of feeling, until he’s spent and shaking.Sam’s hand, gentle now, is stroking down his back.

There’s a farm out there somewhere, and there’s fights so angry that one or both of them will leave. There’s days filled with sleeting cold rain and burning hot sunshine. Days where either one of them will want nothing more than to punch the other one in no-longer-perfect teeth, where hell gets dug up and thrown out and couches get hard use. But they’ll come back. They’ll come around.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos always appreciated.


End file.
